Israel Raybon
Football
Yes, it’s what one does in athletic competition that leads to Hall of Fame recognition. In the case of Israel Raybon, it would be his All-State recognition at Lee High School, his role in winning three national championships at the University of North Alabama, his experience in the National Football League.
But many times, without doing things well off the field, the on-field performances will never take place.
Raybon, at 6-6, 300 pounds when an NFL player, has always been a big man on campus, on the field and now in his business world of automobile sales. At Lee, he was swaggering like a Big Man On Campus, self-possessed and bullet-proof as he made college recruiters swoon. Enter an English teacher, Nancy Styles.
“She got me back on the right path,” Raybon says of Styles, who died in 2012 at the age of 71. “When I got off the path, I was being heavily recruited. One thing that sticks out my mind, I was on the bench one game and I turned around, I saw (Auburn coach) Pat Dye, and I knew he was there to see me. I just kind of got the big head because I didn't have the influence that I needed, and I kind of stopped doing my work. I couldn't keep up in class, and my grades started to slip. She called me up to the front of class one day, and she pointed at this little green book of hers. She said, ‘This is your grade.” And when I looked at it, it was a 34. She said, ‘Good luck signing that scholarship.’ And I knew it was over.”
Mrs. Styles floated an offer after “she let me simmer on it for two days.” She told Israel to report to her house in Eva, a 40-mile drive from campus, four times a week for extra credit work and tutoring.
“There was nothing given to me,” Raybon recalls. “She graded me like I was a regular student. It was hard at the time. I didn’t really like her for it, but she bought into me. She believed in me, and she got me on the right path. And we were friends ever since.”
Perhaps it was more a case of returning Raybon to the path upon which Ed Nulter at Chapman Middle School had steered him.
“Ed brought me onto a basketball team when I couldn't walk or chew gum at the same time, and he knew it,” Raybon laughs. “He sat me down at the end of the bench. And I never played. I came to all these games, and I would watch, and I go to practice every day and practice and practice and practice. And I remember at the end, we went to city championship, and I scored 17 points. He just made me sort of believe in myself.”
Other mentors were in no shortage at Lee High School. Like fellow Hall of Famers Butch Weaver, then the head football coach, and the late Jerry Dugan, the basketball coach. Under Weaver, the Generals finished 11-2 – the first 11-win season in school history – and made it to the third round of the playoffs.
From Lee, Raybon headed to North Alabama, where he was a four-year letterman as a defensive lineman. He was All-Gulf South Conference and All-America in both his junior and senior years. The Lions were 48-5-1 in those four years, winning three consecutive NCAA Division II National Championships (1993-94-95). He earned invitations to the 1995 Blue-Gray All-Star Classic in Montgomery, where he was selected as the Defensive MVP for the Grays, and the East-West Shrine Classic.
Raybon was inducted into UNA’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2006, was named to the NCAA Division II "Team of the Quarter Century" for 1973-97, the Gulf South Conference "Team of the Quarter Century" for 1971-95, the Gulf South Conference Team of the 1990s and the 50th Anniversary UNA Football Team for 1949-98.
Raybon was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the fifth round, and was with them for one season before being traded to the Carolina Panthers. A knee injury shortened his NFL days, but he played three seasons of arena football.
Raybon is the father of a son, Israel Raybon Jr., a senior in high school, and two daughters, Jordin McAfee and Madison Raybon. That makes this honor even more special. “It means the world to me. I always wanted my son, who never got to see me play football, to experience something like this, to see me in this light. He gets to see what his dad was.”
--Mark McCarter
